On-line social worksheets
THE CONCEPT of storing bookmarks on-line and sharing them with anyone on the Net is exploring new frontiers. NetSpeak profiles a couple of services that allow you to store/share worksheets/presentations on-line.
NetSpeak readers need no introduction to the social bookmark services, developed for storing/sharing bookmarks on-line. In fact, this column had discussed a wide variety of such services in the past. Some services allow you to store all kinds of bookmarks (like Linkroll- http://www.spurl.net/), some specialised ones store web links that deal with a special subject category (like Citeulike- http://www.citeulike.org/) and some others help its users not only save bookmarks but also complete web pages (like Spurl- http://www.spurl.net/).
Though the concept of storing/sharing resources on-line has spawned a wide array of services, the main goal of all of them is to provide a common centralised facility for storing/sharing popular web links. Why should we restrict this concept to web bookmarks alone? Why not extend it to other segments? The worksheet sharing service NumSum (http://numsum.com/) is an attempt to address such questions.
One of the computer applications that brought it near to the common man is the spreadsheet software, which is currently being lead by MS Excel. It is likely that many of you have used or at least heard of spreadsheet packages such as Lotus 123 and VisiCalc, the killer applications of yesteryears. These packages essentially enabled many non-technical people to use a computer in meeting their professional/personal needs. These formulae oriented programs enable anyone with a little arithmetic sense to design/develop simple applications like a tax computation tool without a programmer's help.
Social worksheets
To create a worksheet, generally you need a program like Excel. Also, a worksheet created on your desktop cannot be accessed from elsewhere. And to share a worksheet among your clients/friends you need to send a copy of it to each of them. If you edit a worksheet, you need to re-send it all over again. Obviously, one way to circumvent these drawbacks is to have a web-based solution. In this regard, the on-line service NumSum, which allows you to create a worksheet on-line and host it on its server for free, becomes significant.
To create/host a NumSum worksheet you don't need any software. The service provides all the required tools for creating a worksheet with your browser. The on-line worksheet creation facility, though does not have all the features normally found in mainstream products like Excel or Calc, provides almost all the required tools for creating a simple worksheet. To create a worksheet you need to just go through the sign-up process and create an account with the service.
A highlight of this service is that apart from helping you create/host a worksheet that can be accessed anytime from anywhere, it allows you to share the worksheet with others on the Net. Also, while storing the worksheet, you can give a label or tag to it so that it can be accessed easily. Like social bookmark managers, NumSum also displays on its front page the details of all the latest worksheets being stored on its server so that anyone can track them easily by just viewing its home page. If you find a public worksheet of another user useful, you can copy it to your space and edit it anyway you choose. Yet another notable feature of the service is that the worksheets being displayed on its home page can easily be posted on to your blog.
Though NumSum service is quite innovative, it lacks some useful features available on a desktop worksheet package. For instance, this author could not find a tool to copy cells- if anyone of you figure this out please let me know.
SoapBx
The on-line service, SoapBx (http://soapbx.com/main/index) is another social tool worth a test. SoapBx allows you to create/host/share PowerPoint type presentations with your browser.
Brainboost
Though popular search engines (like Google/Yahoo) help us find Net resources, none of them have the ability to give direct answers to our questions. For example, if you want to get all the Web resources that have the answer to the question `what is the theory of relativity', you may not easily succeed by just googling. To get the answer, you will have to do some digging up. The `Answer search engine' BrainBoost (http://www. brainboost.com/index.html), created for providing its users direct answers to their questions will be quite handy when you have to get answers to certain questions fast. For example to get some answers to the question "what is the theory of demand", just enter the question in plain English and see the output.
Tomahawk PDF+
Although several word-processing packages such as Word and WordPerfect are quite popular among the computing fraternity, they are too resource hungry to be used on all machines. To help those users, who do not need such elaborate packages, simple free packages like Abiword (http://www.abisource.com/) are in place. The word processor, Tomahawk PDF+ (http://www.nativewinds.montana.com/software/tomahawk.html) is another simple, free, portable word processor that can be easily carried from one machine to another.
A notable aspect of this product, which enables you to edit (with its `Import' option) Word/WordPerfect/HTML files, is its feature for converting a document directly into a PDF file.
Yet another salient feature of the product is its facility for extracting text from PDF files (with the `Extract PDF' option available under the `Tools' menu').
J. Murali
E-mail the author at: jmurali@gmail.com
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